“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” could prove to become the mantra of the famed Sondheim musical “Merrily We Roll Along” which was a dismal failure when it first opened on Broadway in 1981. There is a new production helmed by the Roundabout’s resident Fiasco Theater Company which falls short of delivering a new efficacious incarnation, becoming…

In the appropriately titled play “The Waiting Game” by Charles Gershman, what quickly becomes apparent to the audience is that everyone in the play is waiting for something. Sam is in a coma from a drug overdose, waiting to wake up, die while in the coma or have someone terminate his life by pulling the plug. His husband Paolo is…

August Strindberg’s naturalism and themes transfer brilliantly from his “Miss Julie” to Yaël Farber’s adaptation of Strindberg’s classic. Farber’s “Mies Julie” is currently running at Classic Stage Company in repertory with the Conor McPherson’s adaptation of Strindberg’s “The Dance of Death.” Like the 1985 stage version of “Miss Julie” at Cape Town’s Baxter Theatre, Mr. Farber’s 2012 adaptation takes place…

The present-day social climate in the theater world has fervently addressed non-traditional casting, gender identity, and diversity as part of an effort to be inclusive and accepting. When a production exhibits a little gender bending, there should be a valid explanation or reasoning behind the decision, whether it be historical, social, or dramatic persuasion. In the case of “Eddie and…

“And there it was. My first laugh. It’s like that flash I’ve heard morphine addicts describe. A warm sensual blanket that comes after a cold, sick rejection. I was hooked.” – Lenny Bruce (from “I’m Not A Comedian . . . I’m Lenny Bruce”) The first image after the lights come up on stage is a slumped over, motionless, naked…

The Clubbed Thumb, True Love, and New York Theatre Workshop production of What the Constitution Means to Me will come to Broadway this spring for a 12-week limited engagement, beginning performances at the Helen Hayes Theater (240 W 44th Street, New York, NY) on March 14, 2019, with opening night scheduled for March 31. Heidi Schreck’s timely and galvanizing play, directed by Oliver Butler, became a sensation off-Broadway…

Award-winning playwright and director Emily Mann, who has served as the Artistic Director and Resident Playwright of the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, New Jersey since 1990, will retire from the position following the upcoming 2019-2020 season, McCarter announced. A fierce champion of works by women and people of color, Mann’s final season, which will be announced in March, will…

Abby Rosebrock introduces an interesting mélange of broken characters in her new play “Blue Ridge” currently running at Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater. She drops these six disparate “recovering” personalities into the vortex of a Christian halfway house in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina. Pastor Hern (a cagey but caring Chris Stack) and his partner Grace…

When Howard Beale (a tortured yet determined Bryan Cranston) first admonishes his listeners to get out of their chairs, go their widows, stick out their heads and yell, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore,” the audience at the Belasco Theatre erupts with a nostalgia that since the 1976 release of Paddy Chayefsky’s “Network” has…

Today, producers Sonia Friedman and Colin Callender announced the new Broadway cast of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, currently in rehearsals to begin performances on Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at the Lyric Theatre (214 West 43rd Street, NYC) following the final performance of the current cast on Sunday, March 17, 2019. James Snyder will play Harry Potter with Diane…